1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to engine driven welders and, more specifically, to engine driven welders having running gears to facilitate movement of such engine driven welders.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
A need to move welding equipment has been long recognized. Various running gears have been provided for suitably moving welding equipment around in a welding shop or other fabricating facility. Such facilities usually have substantially flat floor surfaces, whereby caster-like wheels have been successfully implemented into running gears for rolling the welding equipment across these flat floor surfaces.
At times, needs arise to transport welding equipment to jobsites, that is, away from the fabricating facilities which are purposefully set up for such welding-related tasks. In such instances, engine driven welders are often used because they are stand-alone welding machines that generate their own electrical current and therefore do not have to be plugged into a power source or outlet. Correspondingly, such engine driven welders, with their stand-alone capabilities can be moved to a jobsite.
Engine driven welders can be quite large and heavy, whereby they are at times installed upon a vehicle such as a work truck that is driven to the jobsite. Once the work truck is driven to the job site, the engine driven welder is often left mounted to the work truck and long weld cables are routed to a particular work piece to conduct a welding current, generated by the engine driven welder, to the work piece. Such long weld cables can be heavy and expensive.
Accordingly, efforts have been successfully made to improve engine driven welder technology so that smaller and lighter units had high enough welding performance output capability to make such engine driven welders portable, not only to the jobsites on work trucks, but also at least somewhat portable at the jobsites themselves. This allowed users to manually push or otherwise move the engine driven welders closer to the particular work pieces being welded, allowing the users to implement shorter weld cables which may reduce welder performance losses that can exist as a function of weld cable length (for the same weld cable diameter).
Attempts have been made to enhance portability of such engines driven welders by making them easier for the users to maneuver. For example, it is known to mount an engine driven welder to a cart or undercarriage that has suspension components and/or a steerable axle. Another known cart or undercarriage includes a closely spaced pair of wheels, with smaller wheels being provided toward a front of the undercarriage's base. An elongate push bar is connected to the base of the undercarriage and is located opposite the smaller front wheels in a manner that allows a user to lift the smaller front wheels by pushing down on the elongate push bar. Such carts or undercarriages have proven largely successful at increasing manual portability of engine driven welders.
Notwithstanding, devices that further improve manual portability of engine driven welders could prove desirable.